Enter - The Living Dark
by J.A. Carlton
Summary: Darkness lives, it has minions and hunters of its own. When a rogue cluster of vestiges puts Sam's life in jeopardy nothing will stop Dean from doing whatever has to be done to save his brother from becoming slave to its evil.
1. Chapter 1

While working on my book: The Fourth Tier: Heroes of the Line Book 4, a couple friends of Shep and Tommy's decided to stick their nose into a hunt they never should've been involved in. This is how it went.

Enter – The Living Dark

Pt. 1

By: JA Carlton

Loved: always and forever

Disclaimed: Sam, Dean and their world… sadly.

OOooOO

Lakeview, OR.

The sign read: "Welcome To Lakeview" with that same damned giant cowboy he remembered from the last time he and Sam came here to destroy a demon they'd helped create, and to salt and burn the bones of a serial child killer Dean had the misfortune of stumbling across and killing before he'd even hit puberty.

"Fuckin' hate this place… Talk t'me Sam," he ordered, casting his glance into the rear view mirror at the doughy pale face of his little brother, his eyes were ringed with dark ghoulish circles and his lips were virtually indiscernible from the rest of his face.

"Mmmm, mmm'okay," the younger man grunted, he'd've thought by now, that after all they'd each been through, there wasn't any kind of pain that they weren't familiar with, but this was… different. It felt like his skull was splitting apart, like there was a cherry bomb about to go off in the middle of his brain and make him nothing more than 'squish' on the backseat.

"Like hell you are…" Dean grumbled, "Garth says this Masters guy knows some shit about some shit that we don't know about, once told him about a guy named Silas Templar, apparently he's some sort of mage or something."

Sprawled across the back seat Sam cocked a half smile, "…got it from a guy named Masters… any relation to Meg?"

"Oh shit, don't even think like that," Dean shook his head, "we're about ten minutes out, you just gotta hold on Sammy, whatever this is, we're gonna get you through it."

"Hmm, just my luck," Sam gasped, "shoulda just let me go Dean… shoulda let me go." He slumped even more deeply into the seat as consciousness departed and left Dean chewing his lower lip till it bled.

"Never gonna happen little bro."

OOooOO

Silas Templar's Residence:

"What the hell're we doin' back here? Didn't we get everything we could already?" Sixteen year old Harry Armstrong asked, pulling his newest acquisition to the curb, it was a clanky, clunky old Pontiac Bonneville from the mid sixties and it had more dents than most of Lonnie's friends had meth or heroin sores, but unlike any of his mother's ex-boyfriend's thug friends, it worked.

He glanced at Mickey first, her raven hair and luminous blue eyes were so like that kid Nick's he couldn't help but wonder if they were maybe long lost brother and sister or something. Considering what he knew about what was going on with them, which was almost nothing, they looked so much alike it kinda gave him the creeps.

"Silas was a mage and the schades singled him out because of that. From what both Nick and Frankie have said they're trying to take over hunters, ANY hunters, that means not just the few who have ties to the Heroes but the normal ones, the guys who hold the line against ANY of the things that go 'bump' in the night. They're the only ones that can stop what those sons of bitches are shuttling into our universe."

"The living dark," Harry shuddered remembering the snapping jaws of darkness that broke through the driver door window of his last car trying to get its hooks into both him and Nick.

"Exactly."

He shook his head, "Never shoulda gone to that kid, never shoulda got involved."

"Then you'd inevitably wind up dead without a chance to fight for your own life, I think Nick knows you better than you do yourself," she sighed trying hard to play the part as she made sure her stun-gun was charged, her knife was in her back pocket and the gun Harry'd acquired for her was in the back of her pants.

Guns were tools of last resort at the moment. They wouldn't do much if anything, to schades if they were wearing a human meatsuit, but if it was a human still inside its own skin, well that'd be murder and set a whole different ball of trouble rolling.

So far, from information Mickey'd been able to hack, both the bodies of Lizzie Daykin and Silas Templar had been flagged as 'Unexplained', then quietly shuffled to the back of whatever X-File cabinet coroners kept. It seemed their bodies, when found, were missing certain internal structures, namely bones and organs.

"So what're we supposed to do here?"

"Jack seemed pretty sure Silas would've had some secret stash of tomes or tools or something that we didn't find the first time. I mean let's face it, we were kinda in a rush after all." She was referring to events just a couple days ago when she and Harry and kinda Jack, had rescued Nick from rescuing Frankie from the clutches of The First Schade's right hand, a creature named Ne'Min while it was wearing Silas' meat.

"And why're we listenin' t'that fool? I mean he's the motherfucker shot Nick, why the hell're YOU of all folks listenin' t'him?" Harry demanded wondering for the umpteenth time what he was doing involved in stuff that came from other universes where bad guys could slip into a guy's body, ride it till it was empty and command supposedly living pieces of dark to do its bidding. "…aint' there a place somewhere on this damned shithole planet where the sun shines twenty four seven, I mean what the FUCK!?" he raged again as Mickey grabbed his chin, forcing him to look into her eyes.

"I can't imagine what this must be like for you, but you help me search that house till we find what we're looking for, you get me back to Jack then you can head out to Timbuktu. Nick'll be pissed but he's got the old version of you with him, and that one's loyal, so maybe not so much after all."

"Old version of me… a version of me wasted a lifetime lookin' after that kid and this is what he does t'me!" he shook his head watching the young woman's lip curl up in a sneer of contempt.

"How'd you ever become a man he looked up to?" She spat stepping out of the car and striding with cautious certainty up the lawn to the dark and uninhabited house.

"Son of a bitch!" Harry shook his head wiping the sweat streams from his face as he bolted out of the car, following the young woman into the shadows toward the back door as just a couple doors down the street a glass pack chop fell silent in shadows.

Tbc

Reviews are life-blood.

JACarlton


	2. Chapter 2

Enter – The Living Dark

Pt. 2

Spnfic – HotL crossover

OOooOO

"Well, well, well, what have we here?" Dean asked watching a couple of teenagers dash into the shadows and follow them around to the rear of the house. He glanced into the rearview mirror. Worry crossed his face. He chewed his lip. "Sam? Sammy? Answer me runt!"

Oddly enough, when a faint grunt issued from the virtually unconscious man he couldn't help but smile.

"Just keep on keepin' on Sammy. Looks like Silas has a couple visitors…" he twisted over the back of the bench seat and leaned close to Sam, grabbing the younger man's face in his hand, "Jesus christ you're burning up… listen t'me!" he commanded watching a faint fluttering of the younger man's lids. "I gotta see what these kids are up to, you keep breathing and stay in the car till I come for you get it!?" he demanded shaking the younger man's head, his fingers nearly slipping from his skin thanks to the slick layer of sweat that was covering him.

"Answer me SAM! STAY!" he ordered more harshly than he had in a long time, then sighed when another grunt, this one sounding like assent, came from the young man's throat.

Dashing from the satin darkness of Metallicar he crept through the shadows, his neck hairs standing at attention, his skin crawling, and his every instinct telling him to turn back. But Dean Winchester was a man who calculated, on a subconscious level, every variable his instincts clued him in to. This time, he continued, creeping behind the teens, watching them and listening as they moved through the house, almost as if they'd been there before.

He followed them through the back door, the instant he stepped inside his head felt stuffed with cotton, his breathing came short and everything he knew about spell work of any kind told him this place was warded with something very different than almost anything he'd experienced before. Still, he moved forward just enough to hear the teens.

"I'll take the office, why don't you take the basement," the young man suggested, "you're more likely t'recognize anything we're supposed t'be lookin' for."

"Keep your everything open, if they find out we're here and there's anything to find…" she let the suggestion hang.

"Yeah."

Two sets of footsteps made their way toward their respective destinations, Dean had to make a choice.

He headed toward the basement.

Once he heard Dean's boot-falls crossing the tarmac Sam's eye cracked open and a dark smile crossed his lips. When Dean was out of sight, Sam slid quietly, almost silently out of the car, letting the door rest closed without latching.

He was quick, faster than he could ever remember being before. In fact he was fast enough to catch sight of Dean slipping through the back door, leaving it faintly open behind himself, as if he knew somehow that Sam would follow._ More likely he didn't want to risk the noise and being discovered. _Sam thought as he peered into the crevice between the door and the jamb, seeking Dean. Once the older man moved deeper into the house, presumably after the kids, Sam slipped inside, found himself a shadow and crouched, waiting.

He pressed himself down into the deepest shadow as a teenage female strode purposefully through the kitchen, toward a door that surely led to either a basement or a garage. The light footfalls down told him he was just about to get exactly what he wanted as he started to push himself to his feet only to freeze as his big brother slinked past, also heading after the girl.

_Change of plans then…_ he felt himself shrug internally and waited for Dean's shape to disappear into the dark before moving in the opposite direction, deeper into the house, toward the stairs that would take him to the boy instead. One of the two of them would have the information he needed, and come hell or high water he was gonna get it if he had to rip it out of their heads with his bare hands.

Unafraid, but not quite willing to run the risk of facing a schade on her own either, Mickey flipped the light on and let her eyes roam the basement. Everything from the fireplace to the devils trap in front of it, as well as all the other wards that hung, or were painted, or somehow sealed the room had an air of familiarity to her, even things she'd never seen before.

Taking in the lay of the dead mage's work-room she opted to start at the furthest end and work her way back to the stairs.

On the wall, next to a sealed up window well, was a scarred wood cabinet that looked like it belonged in an eighteenth century prairie home.

The wood was wavy and worn smooth from use rather than finishing and she liked the way it felt in her hand as she opened the door and shook her head. Aspirin, ipecac, band aids, peroxide and triple antibiotic ointment lined the bottom shelf. Gauze pads, iodine, tape, and a sewing kit stood on the second shelf. There was no third.

"If I was a crazy mage where would I keep my most powerful book of spells?" She hummed and turned slowly to take in the rest of the room.

"That's exactly what I'd want to know," Dean responded, his hand coming up in front of him as she gasped and started backing toward the fireplace, her hand reaching for the first tool it found, "easy now, I'm not here for you, I'm here to see a guy named Silas."

"Who are you?" she asked holding her ground, her hand centimeters away from the poker.

"Could ask you the same thing."

"I'm the one who got here first," she snipped, "what do you want with Silas?"

"What do YOU want with him?" Dean couldn't help himself, something about him was amused by this wisp of a girl. She couldn't be more than sixteen, and made Charlie look like Xena, but she obviously had the same kind of spunk, and those blue eyes of hers kinda jumped right out at him, even in the dim light.

"Really?" she asked with a sarcastic cock of the eyebrow.

"My partner and I got hit with something during an investigation, I was told this guy Silas could help us figure out what it was, and how to get rid of it." He slowly reached inside his jacket and pulled out a black leather I.D. holder. He flipped it open, flashing an FBI card and badge at her, "I'm agent Singer, my partner's Agent Roberts, now're you gonna answer my question or do we have to take you both in for B&E?"

To his chagrin a snort tore from her and she chuckled shaking her head, obviously several miles away from believing him, "If you're FBI where's your partner? And unless you're 'X-Files' you're not going to admit to any kind of _thing,_ so, what kind of a thing are we talking about here?"

His lips twisted in a smirk, "We're a different kind of FBI," Dean slid the case back into his pocket, "If I knew that, I wouldn't have to be here would I? And he's somewhere safe."

"Alright Scully, so what were you hunting?" She asked with her arms crossed over her chest and her foot tapping expectantly against the cement. She remembered something Tommy and Shep had said about a pair of hunters they knew and some kind of thing they'd done to save the "Universe" from some kind of exiled god or something, and for some reason she seemed to think even Nick and Frank might know who this guy was, but she couldn't for the life of her recall if anyone had ever said their names.

Trying hard not to smile Dean nodded, more to himself than to her, "Ever heard of a thought-form?"

The young woman shook her head, "Lemme guess, someone called one up and let it go rogue and now it's on its way to becoming a full-fledged wraith."

"You got it sister."

"When are people gonna learn not to screw with stuff they don't wanna take responsibility for?"

"Good question, so your turn, ante up. Where's Silas?"

"Dead. He got et then turned into a tuxedo for a schade."

Dean's eyebrows shot up almost into his hairline as something hard thumped to the floor above them.

"Oh shit."

"Harry!" she half roared before shooting up the stairs faster than Dean could believe though he did keep hot on her heels.

"Wait…" Dean called, "a _what_?"

"You _will_ tell me where the mage is!" Sam ground through clenched teeth, his hand tight on Harry's neck, squeezing and pressing him into the floor, it was clear he'd already landed several stony blows on the barely conscious teen.

"Shit!" Mickey cursed quickly assessing the situation then launching herself into the room at the ginormous hunter. She impacted him hard, her shoulder hitting him square in the back of the rib cage, and her momentum carrying them both off her quickly fading partner.

She was quick to her feet but so was he, his hands and arms impossibly strong as he picked her up and threw her through the door and into the far wall of the hallway. The irate and presumably possessed hunter stalked toward her, his already dark eyes seeming to shine with malevolence as he reached out his talon-like hand.

"_Te'ssa_!" She yelled whipping her arms out in front of her as if she was pushing him away.

He struggled, pushing back, trying to make his way through whatever barrier she'd just thrown at him, but he was quickly losing ground.

_That's a lot of power there… I think I'll take it…_ he thought redoubling his efforts to reach her.

Mickey forced herself to her knees, one hand still in front of her, pushing while the other reached for her knife.

Between them Harry launched himself at the older man only to land hard against the hunter's stony fist.

Taking the opportunity, Mickey threw the gleaming blade at the rage driven mountain of muscle and stood gaping as he batted it away, and turned his attention fully to her.

"Son of a bitch," she gasped daring a quick look behind her as she stepped backward in response to the six and a half foot tall predator's stalking.

"You're a hunter man! Please there's gotta be something in there of the man, if you are who I think you are, I hear you're like… indestructible, I mean you saved a friggin' UNIVERSE… unless that was just PR… Seriously, you can't let that son of a bitchin' thing take you over like this!" she panted, moving backward toward the stairs, hoping to lead him away from Harry long enough for the teen to recover from the thunderous head blow he'd just taken.

From the darkness the older man seemed to soar into view, colliding with the compromised hunter, sweeping them both back, deep into the room.

"Get out of here!" 'Agent Singer's' unmistakable voice urged a scant second before the all too familiar sound of flesh impacting flesh came to Mickey's ears.

Without hesitation she crouched beside Harry, helped him shake off the hunters' attack, and wrestled him to his feet.

"C'mon, we gotta get outta here."

"Can't leave 'em…" Harry muttered through his split and bloody lips.

"If these guys are who I think they are, they sure as hell don't need our help…"

"Then what the hell are we even doing?" Harry grumbled, scowling deeply at her while shrugging her hands off him.

He lurched forward into the room where the two men were locked in apparently mortal combat.

"C'mon man, fight it, after all we've been through!" the shorter one commanded even as he was thrown across the room and into the wall.

"Son of a bitch," Mickey spat, retrieving her knife and quickly running the blade across her palm. She stooped, hastily scrawling a triquetra onto the floor then squeezed a stream of blood onto the symbol, "_I'essa 'en Danu amin naia lle a'putta!_" she hissed just as the thread of her own life essence instantly glowed orange and a ripple of that same light burst through the room, freezing everyone but her.

"What the hell'd you do?!" the older hunter demanded as much as his frozen countenance would allow.

Dean's eyes were able to move enough to glance at his currently, probably but impossibly possessed little brother who also stood frozen, a sneer of vile hatred twisting his face, his fingertips stretched claw-like mere millimeters from the older man's neck.

"We know who you are, you're Shep and Tommy's hunter friends, you think the thought-form's already went wraith and it's what's got him right?" Mickey asked approaching the older man with a fingertip streaked in blood. She traced a line down the center of his forehead and the bridge of his nose, "_Leitha._"

He jerked, regaining his balance with a minimum of effort, obviously impressed as he shrugged with his mouth and walked around his hugely built little brother. "Well he's warded against demons," Dean smirked pulling aside Sam's shirt, revealing a seal of Solomon tattooed on his chest before revealing his own. "What the hell kind of spell was that?"

Releasing Harry the same way, Mickey chewed her lip, walked to the back side of the still frozen hunter and pulled his shirt up.

"What're you doing?"

"Looking for signs of a schade, and it was Elvish."

Heat spread through her as she ran her hand up the largely pristine flesh of the hunter's back, his warmth, muscles and satin skin setting fire to her and bringing memories of the first Nick back to the forefront of her mind. "Damnit!" she breathed wondering if one of these guys wouldn't mind slaking her hunger.

"Excuse me… what?" the older one asked, "Schade? What's a schade?"

"Yeah, Shep said you guys were strictly demons, ghosts and shit."

"… and angels, rawheads, chupacabras, wraith, witches, dragons, there's a lot of nasty out there, but never heard of a schade." He shook his head then looked over the young dark haired woman who stood seemingly frozen with her hand against his little brother's bare back; her lips were slightly parted, her breath short and shallow, her pupils had nearly swallowed that crazy icy blue of her eyes. Yeah, he knew all the signs, he'd seen 'em and coaxed 'em out often enough. He snapped his fingers briskly, "Hey, horny mchornerson… Elvish?"

"Yeah," she breathed shaking herself out of wherever she'd gone. "an appeal to Danu."

Her cheeks turned pink as she turned her gaze on him. He was more than twice her age but that only made her interest more intense, their combined presences, coupled with the raw sexual certainty bot of these men possessed had flipped the switch inside that she tried to keep tamped down. It was easy enough around Harry, he was just as sexually inexperienced as almost every other sixteen year old boy she knew, that was part of the reason he held no real appeal for her. She wanted Nick, but he'd ordered her to this realm and no matter what she had to do to earn his trust, she'd do it. She knew he didn't care about sex, at least not in this timeline so she doubted he'd care much about anyone she chose to bed, but she certainly wasn't about to run the risk of screwing the boy who'd eventually become the man who was his best friend. "…she uh…" she breathed feeling her head fill with cotton. This was worse than any other wanting she'd ever had, and unlike anything she'd ever experienced before.

"…my god…" she glanced from the older hunter to Harry who stood gazing at her with a strange mixture of curiosity and something bordering on disgust on his face.

"What the hell's wrong with you?" Both he and Dean asked together.

It was the hunter who acted though, clamping her wrist in his hand, pulling her away from Sam and giving her a little shake at the shoulders.

"Jeez man… I, uh…"

"…an appeal to Danu," he tried to get her back on track, "as in the Goddess?"

"Yeah."

"Isn't that who Kitsune was…" he started before remembering Sam was completely immobile, "nevermind. So these schades are working with Danu?"

Her expression twisted with a hint of curious contempt, she couldn't stand ignorance. "How are you a hunter?" she asked leaning toward him, breathing him deep inside. She could almost taste the chemical change of his scent as he looked her over, found her desirable, and the cascade of hormones flooded his system, readying him for mating. By the time he realized he was almost as turned on as she was, he forced himself to take several steps backward. "What the hell are you? Some kind of siren or something?"

She shook her head, "No, part sidhe but I've never felt this before with anyone but Nick."

"Sidhe? As in faeries? Good faeries or mischevious faeries, I fuckin' _hate_ mischievous faeries!" he growled in spite of being pulled forward by that odd sensation growing between the two of them.

"Not faeries, Elven Sidhe – think Legolas, not Titania. We need to find out if it's still a thought-form or if it's turned completely into a wraith, or if it's something altogether different. If you're in this neck of the woods and you don't know what a schade is, odds are you don't know what a vestige is either, or living dark…has he been cut recently?"

"What what and what?" He shook his head, his jade green eyes locked on hers, his full lips slightly parted and his breath coming more shallowly now. "Uh, uh." He took a step back and shook his head to clear it, "No."

"Is he just mean?"

"_Him_? Not a mean bone in his body."

Shaking herself out of the pheromone haze that was threatening her senses Mickey slipped around to Sam's front and began unbuttoning his shirt and trying to ignore the heat building in her depths.

"Wha'dyou think you're doing?"

"Mickey!" Harry hissed.

"We need to find out what's riding him to fight it right?" She nodded then sucked wind at the sight before her. His chest and abdomen, every bit of his front side that could be seen appeared to have been, at one time in the not so distant past, somehow clawed open. It almost looked like a giant palm leaf had been traced in scar tissue over his body, "Dear god… what the hell did this?" she sniffed against the tears that came to her eyes.

"A succubus got her mitts on him a few years ago what're you doing?"

He watched carefully as she drew another triquetra of blood, this time on his little brother's chest, then filled each of the openings with what he supposed was a sacred symbol.

"How do you know this kind of spellwork?"

"Most of what I know I borrowed from other timelines."

"'scuse me?"

"Alternate realities, roads not taken in this world but taken in other universes."

"Great more multiverse shit," he scowled shaking his head, "so back to schades, what the hell are they and what do they have to do with Danu or my little brother for that matter?"

"Long and short of it, they were sidhe once but they went darkside and now they're feeding the insides of hunters to vestiges to get meatsuits they can wear in the daylight out of it," Harry finally explained.

Together they watched as Mickey stepped back and placed her bloody palm directly in the center of the symbol she'd drawn on Sam's warm, broad chest and whispered a single word, "_Yanta calma._"

They stood marveling as the hunter's flesh glowed deep red, then brighter orange, and finally seemed to shimmer into transparency. First the skin, then the connective tissues, muscles, bones and organs, until when it was all said and done, they appeared to be looking through a warped statue of lucent crystal dressed in the man's clothes.

"Holy shit!" Harry gasped.

"What the fuck…" Dean breathed leaning forward and ducking down to peer upward into Sam's head. Deep in the center of the space where his now-transparent brain sat, nestled around the thalamus, a shadowy amorphous shape seemed to squeeze and pulse, and with every pulse, smoky tendrils seemed to waft into folds and convolutions of exterior surface of the brain itself.

"That can NOT be good," the older hunter breathed, "what the hell is that? Is that a schade?"

Both Harry and Mickey shook their heads, "I have no idea…"

"Could be living dark, just a bit of it," Harry muttered.

Dean frowned, "Living dark?"

"Yeah man, the shit the schades are escorting right into our friggin universe, destroyer of light with a will of its own, trust me this living dark shit ain't nuthin' t'fuck around with." The young man nodded sagely, remembering with a shiver, the moment a tendril of living dark almost got him and Nick while in his car, watching Lizzie Daykin's house.

"You got a mouth kid," Dean sighed shaking his head and pulling out his phone to snap a picture and send it to someone.

"Yeah, it's me," he said seconds later when it rang, "Could be a wraith, but I'm not sure," he paused then shook his head, "I don't know, maybe because I was possessed by the thing at the time. Anyway got a couple of kids here talking about something called 'living dark' and schades and shit, you wanna hit the books and lemme know…" his eyebrows shot up again and he glanced at the kids, "so how come we've never heard of this till now?" he nodded and rolled his eyes, "Yeah, yeah, heaven, hell, all their respective denizens and of course, the family baggage, I get it… so," he pressed his lips together, his gaze fixed on Mickey while her gaze was fixed on his mouth, "Yeah, soon as you can but if the stun gun doesn't work I'm gonna need something else. Yeah I'll let you know." He ended the call and turned to the two teenagers before him, "either of you got…"

They both pulled their stun guns and held them out.

"Thanks," he shook his head surprised then started to motion to the clothes wearing statue his brother had become, but Mickey was already on it. She stepped forward, swept a break in the seal she'd painted on the man and said simply, "End."

They watched amazed as the body before them became opaque once more, all the tissues and fluids pulsing and pumping just as they should be in spite of the fact that he was still being held immobile.

In spite of the heat she felt herself going into, when Sam's opacity returned, she found herself looking directly into his eyes and backpedaled against the pure hate and malevolence that drilled out of him.

"Jesus Christ what the fuck's got you?" she breathed backing into the eldest Winchester then twisting quickly away before she did something she couldn't control.

"What the hell's wrong with you girl?" Harry scowled.

"I don't know… there's something about them… it's like… there's something… it's not natural, it's… I don't understand it."

"I haven't touched a sixteen year old since I was fifteen and I don't plan on it now," Dean warned, "and don't look to him either," he motioned to Sam then did a double take at the depth of darkness he saw in the younger man. "It's like Meg all over again." He shuddered and stabbed Sam in the belly with the stun gun, cranking it until the consciousness left his eyes and he hung in the same frozen position, completely devoid of awareness. "That's just wrong," Dean shook his head, "can you undo him?"

She nodded, broke the spell and watched Dean and Harry lower Sam to the floor.

"If he was himself he never woulda done that," Dean explained motioning to the bloodied and blackened young man.

"I've had worse," Harry shrugged.

"Where were you when you ran across this thing?" Mickey asked.

"Some old burnt out warehouse on the west side, we got word some ghouls were squatting there, and thought-forms are drawn to darkness and the vortices they're manifested from…" he frowned at their expressions, "there's a vortex about a hundred and fifty miles from here."

"Oh hell,"

"Shit," Mickey and Harry grumbled together.

"What?"

"This is not good," she shook her head, "we need to get him in a trap till we can figure this out."

"What the hell're you thinking kid?"

"A burnt out old warehouse on the West side? Did it smell like it'd just been blown up? Like recently?" Harry asked.

"Yeah."

"Ghouls?" Harry asked, "what exactly are they?"

"They eat the flesh of the dead, but like djinn they tend to hunker down in abandoned, wasted places."

"And what's a thought-form exactly… sorry man I'm still fucked up about the whole living dark and schades and vestiges thing it's a shit-ton t'digest y'know?" he shrugged.

"I'm getting that," Dean nodded grabbing Sam under the arms while Harry grabbed his legs and Mickey stood ready with the stun gun in case he started to wake up.

Together they trundled the ginormous little brother down into Silas' basement and bound him in a chair that had not so long ago been host to one of the most prominent deal makers in hell.

"A thought-form is an energetic familiar witches usually manifest to spy on people or perform various chores, usually ones they don't wanna get caught doing themselves like collecting hair or teeth or something," Mickey explained, shackling Sam's ankles to the steel legs of the chair.

"And they're bad why?"

"If they're not destroyed in a certain time frame…"

"24 to 48 hours," Dean interjected.

"They turn into creatures called wraiths, those creatures are drawn to… darkness, like the soul kind," Mickey explained then added, "I don't know about the real kind but since living dark is actually LIVING I'm going to guess any wraith is going to be drawn to it."

"Which explains why, if the warehouse is infested with ghouls it'd go there, and since…"

"Wee, Ryan and Lou all figured the schades were using it as kind of an underground railroad…"

Harry's face lit up, "You don't think a wraith and living dark would team up? Please tell me you don't think that."

"Wee and Ryan?" Dean frowned, "Ryan Stevenson? Tall guy, longish dark blonde hair, built like a shithouse?"

"Yeah," Mickey nodded, "He and Howie are Nick and Frank's guardians."

"Everson…Emerson! Right?" Dean nodded as she did.

"So you _are_ Tommy and Shep's indestructible duo, Wesson? Walther…something like that, a gun name right?"

Dean nodded and for the first time in a damned long time felt a twinge against revealing their real names, especially since they were kids, and especially since most of their friends wound up dead, "That be us. You haven't seen 'em lately have you? I mean they kinda dropped off the grid lately."

They were all searching through the cabinets, setting up and reinforcing wards as Mickey stormed through every possible hiding place, looking now in earnest for those books or Silas's safe.

"Hmmm," she breathed.

"Nuh, don't you tell me they're dead!" Dean grumbled grabbing her by the shoulders to hold her still then forcing her to meet his eyes so he could see the truth. "Damnit!"

"Shep's alive. Tommy didn't make it, there was a battle, it was bad… I'm not even sure if Ryan's still alive, last we knew he was… on the brink."

Anguish twisted Dean's features, his mind flying back through the decades, moments of happiness, angst and comfort taken and given with Shepard McGregor and his nephew Tommy. They'd been adopted as family ever since Dean got stolen from the Impala at a rest stop by a spirit in a time loop, and it took a two year old Sam to lead Tommy right through the veil of time to where his big brother might have met his end by combine. Ryan had been there too, helping find him, but it was Tom and Shep that Sam and Dean had developed a familial attachment to, the same two men who'd helped them recover from everything that nearly ended the universe a few years back. It wasn't fair! Pain shot through his heart.

"I'm sorry," she said softly, as the flooring under her bounced oddly. "Hellooooo?" she greeted crouching down and using her blade to pry up the edge of one of the hard-wood planks that covered that part of the basement. "Silas's safe."

"What choo wanna bet he hid his best shit here?" she asked pulling a sheet of paper from her pocket and starting to try various combinations Jack thought the mage might have used.

In the chair Sam rolled his head, groaned, and started to come around, instantly fighting his shackles like a demon in a frenzy.

His scream shattered the very air of the room, the haunting alto Dean had heard too many times before, always when he was powerless to help his only reason for living, sent a shudder through them all.

"I will DEVOUR YOU!" the youngest Winchester roared, his voice a cacophony of unearthly layers that seemed to resonate from the bowels of hell itself. The sound of a bone breaking came to their ears, and blood poured from the torn skin of one of his wrists as one of the bones poked out through the glove of his flesh.

Without a thought Dean lurched toward him, the stun gun firing before it even made contact. In seconds the youngest Winchester sat dripping blood and once again unconscious.

"That was no ordinary wraith," Dean gasped, his heart pounding and sweat pouring down him with the realization that once again, they were up against something wholly unknown to them. _How much more shit is there in this fucking universe that we don't know how to fight!?_

"Dude you can't do that again if you don't wanna kill him, I got that thing jacked up to the max, 175 Kv," Harry protested.

He shuddered, remembering several lifetimes ago when he'd almost died because of his own amped up taser, it was the beginning of the end for the Winchesters. Everything that had happened to them could be traced back to that moment as the one that started their accursed string of bargains with other powers. _He should've let me die, course then he'd argue I should've let him too… god we're fucked up, and takin' the world with us. _"Then we need to hurry," he turned to Mickey, "get that open and see if you can find some kind of binding spell… I can't believe after all the shit we've been through, all the shit we can do… I can't remember a damned friggin' binding spell!"

He whipped around, his face alight and began spewing an impressive string of latin, hope lighting his eyes as he did so, but wound up crestfallen when all was said and done and his brother remained unconscious and still inhabited by something other-worldly.

"If it got past the first seal of Solomon it's got to be old," he muttered grimacing as he pulled Sam's hand forward, reducing the open break till the bone was back within his skin, then wrapped the limb tightly with a towel Harry brought him.

"Well it's just a guess, but I'd venture to bet that darkness has been around since before the universe decided to stop being 'void' and sprouted into this whole vast messiness of 'something'." He opined while Mickey returned her focus to the safe.

"If it's this 'living dark' how do we fight it?" Dean asked just before the girl let out a 'whoop!' and the safe in the floor slid open revealing a set of eleven leather bound books not unlike hunters' journals.

"Friggin' jackpot!" she grinned removing them carefully, dismayed by their longevity and their delicacy. "Be careful with 'em guys," she divvied them up between the three of them.

"I'd imagine the only thing gonna drive out living dark is light. Question is, how do get light up inside someone's brain pan?"

"Could you do that spell again?" Dean asked.

Mickey shrugged, "Sure, don't know if it'd do any good though."

"It made him transparent."

"It was a 'reveal' spell, not something that's going to change the nature of his atomic structure, he's still solid, light might not pass through him to the inside," she tried to explain but could see the older hunter didn't get what she was saying. Instead she nodded, "Won't hurt to try. We just need a really powerful light source."

"Will a hand beacon do?" Dean asked.

"Maybe," she nodded watching him bound to his feet and dash back up the stairs.

"You shouldn't go alone!"

Dean's voice faded as did his footsteps, "Just find us a plan B."

"You don't think it's gonna work?" Harry asked as the front door slammed shut behind the hunter.

"No, the spell was to bridge our vision not to make him transparent."

"But he was…" Harry shook his head, not understanding what she was saying.

"No," she shook her head, "the mark was to identify the object we wanted see through. He didn't change, it was our perceptions that did."

Harry's jaw dropped and he leaned back, "How the hell could you know a spell like that right off the top of your head?"

She swallowed hard and shrugged, "I've been using it since I was a kid, to see the other timelines. I used to have this kind of, but not really, recurring dream, I mean it was me and Nick and Frank and you, and bunches of other folks all living this other life… and I used it in the dream. It was so vivid it never left, but it was a couple years of seeing it over and over that I finally tried it."

"What'd you mark?"

"Myself."

"That's effed up."

"Son of a bitch… Sammy why's it always gotta be us man…" Dean moaned quietly into the night.

As he jogged down the lawn his neck hairs sprang to attention and he shifted his course, heading toward the nearest, deepest shadow he could find. There was something out there watching him and he knew it, he just couldn't _see_ anything.

His gaze darted through the area, noting cars parked, including his baby, every sense straining to catch something incongruous, something that would tell him which way trouble was coming from.

_Should've asked what those damned schades look like… Harry said they're sidhe gone darkside and she said 'think Legolas not Titania' so… something human like. _An image of her flashed in his mind, the soft flush of her face when she'd been feeling Sam up, the way her lips had plumped up and her breath shortened, _those eyes man… almost swallowed whole by those pupils, sheesh if she was just a few years older…_ but then the voice of the woman he loved whispered softly in the back of his brain, _"…we'll go to my room and I will territorialize you, and you'll consider yourself mine until I am dead, fair?" _Dean could feel himself smiling again with the memory of that night and the warm comfort of knowing he had one person who loved him unconditionally, no matter how badly he screwed up sometimes.

A flicker, maybe a bit of shadow crossed through the periphery of his vision as he scanned the area again and brought his every bit of energy back to the moment.

"Come oooooon," he growled low as something whisked past his shoulder. He spun with a punch into nothingness. Above him the streetlight flickered and rocked as a thick ropy strand of what looked like demon-smoke wound its way around the structure.

"Living dark," he realized, understanding suddenly just a little more of the young man's palpable fear when talking about the stuff, "son of a bitch…" he poured on the speed, racing to the car as another tendril, this one as big around as one of his thighs plunged toward him, forcing him to veer into the cone of light from the lamp it was trying to tear down.

"Could use a little HELP HERE!" he yelled as loudly as he could, hoping his voice would reach the kids and that they'd have some way to give him a hand.

Once he was trapped inside the cone of light the darkness coalesced around him, each of the tendrils spiraling the perimeter, rising upward until a huge crunching and the sound of screaming metal left him enveloped in darkness.

"Son of a bitch…" he breathed as the night sky was shut out and he was imprisoned.

He pulled his lighter and struck the wheel, watching as the roiling darkness behind the reach of the flame's light moved away.

"Gotcha," he sneered pushing his lighter at the wall of dark, trying to force it to move in the direction he knew the car was. If he could just get to his baby!

Without the slightest hint of warning, a bulb of dark moved out and enveloped the lighter, literally suffocating the flame before it wrapped itself around his hand and pain of a thousand stabs drove him screaming to his knees.

Tbc.


End file.
